


without warning

by psikeval



Series: cabbage: a love story [4]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: M/M, Shovel Talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-16
Updated: 2015-08-16
Packaged: 2018-04-15 01:33:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4587993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psikeval/pseuds/psikeval
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s never taken this lightly, isn’t sure he’s the sort of man who can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	without warning

**Author's Note:**

> WELL, HELLO AGAIN.
> 
> another fic, thanks in no small part to [valerie](http://amoktimes.tumblr.com) & [wren](http://vaincs.tumblr.com) putting up with my pre-posting neuroses

\--

 

There’ve been a few quiet weeks, for once.

Cadash has traveled back to the Western Approach, to close a few lingering rifts and handle rumors of a darkspawn incursion. In her absence they carry out the orders she left, as time and resources allow, and Cullen has actually managed to get ahead of schedule, using the nights he couldn’t sleep to start on the next day’s work. He’s been _good_ , and when Josephine suggests a day of rest from official business, for once he doesn’t argue.

So at the moment he’s in Krem’s quarters, kissing him.

Maker, he’s missed this. By now Krem has him pressed against the wall, nudging his leg between Cullen’s thighs, and it’s hard to imagine a time when he could stand to be anywhere else, or what on earth could possibly be half as important.

He licks his lips, more impulse than anything, and Krem groans quietly and kisses him again, slowly, tracing his tongue over the spot he’d bitten just a moment ago.

The door swings open.

“Krem! Chief wants us to— oh,” Dalish stops in her tracks, eyes wide, just as Cullen recoils so quickly he hits his head against the stone. “ _Oh_.”

“Dalish,” says Krem, absently reaching around to cradle the back of Cullen’s skull, warm and gentle on the sore spot. “See the talk about knocking hasn’t quite sunk in.”

“I don’t mind,” she assures them cheerfully. Her stare darts over Cullen, still pinned to the wall and holding tight to Krem’s waist. “Nope. Don’t mind at all,” she says again, but this time her eyes catch Cullen’s, bright and curious in a way that curls hot inside him and he _wants_ , desperately, without a single reason why, wants her to stay and watch while—

He looks away, to the far corner of the room, cheeks burning. Maker, there must be something wrong with him. Rather than examine it a moment longer, Cullen drops his head against Krem’s chest and lets himself take comfort in the hand sliding down to rub at the back of his neck.

“Some of us do mind, Dalish,” Krem says, a little more sharply than usual. “Whatever he wants, I’ll be out in a minute.”

“Your head, not mine,” says Dalish easily enough, and the door soon shuts behind her.

Krem sighs, resigned to his own long-suffering annoyance like a brother being pestered by his siblings, and scratches slowly along Cullen’s hairline. “Sorry about that. You all right?”

“Yes.” He straightens up and tries not to feel too conscious of whatever Krem might see in his expression—never a particular strength of his, especially when they’re—well, when they’re together, and every soft, fragile moment feels like something he could break.

“I should go,” says Krem, leaning in to kiss his cheek, like an apology.

“Yes. I mean, I— yes. I understand. If it’s all right I’ll—stay here, for a moment. I need to…” Stare at the walls. Take deep breaths. Think about grain supplies and requisition forms and, if necessary, grisly deaths on the battlefield.

Krem shrugs. “Fine with me. Just don’t make too much of a mess.”

“I wasn’t— I wouldn’t do that!” he sputters, too flustered to know he’s being teased until Krem laughs, running his hands up and down Cullen’s arms.

“I know, I know. Just let me picture it. Nice mental image. You in here all sweaty and disheveled, one hand around your cock, thinking about me—”

“ _Maker_ ,” Cullen absolutely does not whimper, “please, stop,”

It’s not that he thinks Krem won’t listen, but he’s taken aback by how quickly he goes still, looking genuinely concerned. “Sorry. Shit, I was trying to cheer you up. Bad?”

Cullen’s attempt at self-deprecating laughter is butchered by the deep breaths he’s taking to convince himself to calm down. “Only because I have to go out in public.”

“And if you didn’t…”

He kisses Krem, harder than he means to, because the thought of Krem’s voice in his ear, saying things like _that_ , it’s—overwhelming, too much to even contemplate. “Mm. I’m going,” Krem mutters between kisses, before slipping his tongue into Cullen’s mouth with a slick sound that makes Cullen’s knees weak. “I’m leaving. I’m,” his hips shift closer and they both gasp for breath, “out in the yards, right now. Model soldier.”

“ _Krem!_ ” This time it’s a male voice Cullen doesn’t recognize, shouting on the other side of the door. “ _Boss says get decent and hurry your ass up, or you’re buying drinks for a year!_ ”

“Yeah, all right, I’m coming!” Krem yells back, then rolls his eyes. “That’s what he’s afraid of.”

“ _That’s what I’m afraid of!_ ”

“Nice and predictable, I’ll give him that.”

Cullen takes the opportunity to step away before he can become any more— distracted, unwilling to be the one standing between a soldier and his orders. It would set something of a bad example, to say the least. “I shouldn’t keep you.”

“Oh, you should definitely keep me,” he says, with a grin that fades too quickly when they both hear what he’s said, and a silence descends in which Krem pretends to look around assiduously for the last few pieces of his armor and Cullen acts as if his heart isn’t beating too loudly in his chest, a desperate cadence of _please, let me_.

A moment later, Krem clears his throat. “Right, then. I’ll just—”

“Yes,” Cullen agrees too quickly. “Of course.”

 

\--

 

Eight days later, he finds Skinner sitting on his desk.

He’s been training a batch of former Starkhaven templars with Lysette, and only came up in their half-hour break to make sure no important messages have arrived while they were practicing. There’s nothing flagged for his attention on the _right_ side of his desk, at least.

The other side is being taken up by Skinner, one of the few Chargers he knows by name, though he’d first thought she had to be one of Leliana’s. She moves like an assassin, but the look in her eyes—it’s more like something from the back-alley fighting pits of Denerim. Sharp and bloodthirsty, nothing that can fade so easily into shadow and be forgotten.

She tilts her head at Cullen slowly, silently, turning the dagger between her fingers before raising it and stabbing it into his stack of read and discarded reports. The blade is sharp enough that it doesn’t make a sound, not the quietest crumple of paper, and only by the slight tension in her hand does Cullen guess that she’s also punctured his desk. Her knife stands up straight where she leaves it, like a sword left to rust in the corpse of a foe.

Skinner looks from the dagger to him, rather pointedly, and raises her eyebrows.

“You know what I did, before joining the Chargers?” Her accent is rich and heavy, most likely from one side of the border between Orlais and Nevarra, but he can’t quite place it. It lends unexpected weight to her voice, and no small bit of menace.

This woman just _stabbed his desk_.

“No,” says Cullen. “I don’t.”

“Killed shemlen who hurt my friends.” Skinner shrugs. “And a few not my friends. Killed a bunch of rich shemlen in fancy armor who didn’t care if they hurt people.”

“I see.”

“I liked killing them. They deserved it.”

Cullen finds himself too honest to disagree with her on principle, too genuinely unnerved to do more than wait for her to continue.

“If you try and hurt Krem, I’ll like killing you too.”

“What?”

She frowns, clearly unimpressed. “Think you heard me.”

“Yes,” Cullen admits, still stunned, looking around his office as if for some concrete confirmation of reality. “And I— I appreciate your concern for a friend. But you can’t just go around threatening people with—”

“Not people. Just you.”

He stares at her then, and when her words have sunk in Cullen finds himself fighting the ridiculous urge to laugh, but averts his gaze to the blank stone wall and tamps it down. “All right, just me,” he concedes, unwilling to escalate the situation further. “I’ll do my best.”

“Good,” says Skinner, rising from his desk and prying the knife out as she goes. It’s tucked into a hidden sheath, no doubt with others of its kind. “I’ll be watching.” 

 

\--

 

The red templars, Cullen thinks, trailing up the stairs to the main hall, really ought to be frightened of the Inquisitor. She’s a dangerous woman. In more than just a carta way, or a dwarf wielding greatswords half-again her size way. Cadash is… _diabolical._

He stops, halfway up, and thinks that the stars are quite pretty, that there are far too many flights of stairs in Skyhold, and furthermore that he is really exceptionally drunk.

It’s these endless journeys Cadash takes. Somehow she always returns with liquor, and she always wants to _share_. This time she’d dug up more bottles from her ‘personal stock’— which Cullen should have realized were things everyone refused to drink the first time around—and handed him something called Garbolg’s with the advice he not smell it before drinking.

And Maker help him, he’d actually _listened_.

“Cullen, dear.”

It’s Vivenne, which startles him. She’s usually upstairs. She isn’t now. She’s downstairs, here. Between stairs. Carefully upwind, a precaution Cullen really can’t blame her for.

“Mm’yes?” He straightens up, which somehow only makes him feel more off-balance. “Yes.”

She doesn’t sigh so much as the sighing is implied, by the put-upon arch of her eyebrow, the brief flicker of her eyes towards the heavens. “A few of the Iron Bull’s Chargers came to speak with me today. They requested that I,” Vivienne clears her throat, lifts her chin, “ _put fear of the Maker inna that big fancy asshole, maybe set ‘im on fire or summat._ ”

Her northeast Fereldan accent is perfect enough that Cullen almost asks if she knows anyone in the Crimson Oars. He doesn’t, because drunk is a far cry from having a death wish.

“Now," she continues smoothly, “I’ve very little respect for a man who can’t recognize that I am no fire mage, or that ‘fancy’ is hardly the proper adjective for—”

“An asshole?”

“For you, dear.” Vivienne pats his arm delicately, like it might be catching. “That said, I’m rather fond of Cremisius. He’s a very helpful young man. Spectacular bone structure. Do you know he helped me rearrange this entire area last week? All by himself. He is tremendously strong.”

“His _arms_ ,” says Cullen with great feeling.

The prolonged moment in which she does _not_ roll her eyes seems to fill the whole hall with disdain. “Quite.”

“He doesn’t let me call him Cremisius.”

“Perhaps he was simply worried the extra syllables would confound you.”

“Oh.” He frowns, not just at the wooziness filling his skull. He’s not some ignorant bumpkin. He _isn’t_. Is that how he seems to the others? Though probably everyone’s a bit of an idiot compared to Vivienne. Maybe she has special privileges. “I see.”

“Good night, Commander,” says Vivienne firmly, and that’s the end of that.

 

\--

 

Suffice to say that the next day, Cullen is more than a little hung over. His head is throbbing, his body feels like a useless aching void, and he can’t decide if he needs a good solid lunch or to throw up over the battlements again. He’s only recently erred on the side of tea and fresh-baked bread, and begun the sluggish crawl towards feeling more like a person, when Dalish arrives in his office with as grim and determined a look as she can muster.

“Let’s say for a moment that I’m not an archer,” she announces straightaway.

Cullen glances at the crystal-tipped staff strapped prominently to her back, the rings on her fingers etched with runes he can still recognize, even in their elven variations, and wisely says nothing. Instead he grabs his third cup of tea and drains half of it to fortify himself.

“If that were the case,” Dalish continues, undeterred, “I’d be quite a dangerous person, wouldn’t I? All those spells just hovering around my fingertips, waiting to be unleashed. Of course, I’m no _apostate_ , but I have ways of making my displeasure known. Roguish, tempest-y ways. With the ice and the fire and lightning, you know.”

“Ah.”

“It’s all in little flasks.”

“Yes, I think I understand.”

“Good. I’m glad you do.” Dalish frowns at him a while longer, lips thinning in a frown, before jabbing her finger emphatically into Cullen’s face. “And he said you like your privacy, but if you start acting ashamed of him I’ll make all your armor freeze so hard you’ll be blue to your teeth.”

He opens his mouth to protest — who, in the Maker’s name, could think he’s the slightest bit ashamed of Krem — but then, perhaps ill-advisedly, he changes course. “With flasks, I take it?”

“With whatever I need,” she says quite coldly, and Cullen is reminded of another unassuming elven mage, always friendly and kind, who ripped her enemies’ blood from their bodies.

“Right,” he agrees, more subdued now.

He waits until Dalish is gone before slowly dropping his head down on his desk, using his arms to block the worst of the sunlight. Perhaps the Inquisition can just do without him for the day.

 

\--

 

The tavern’s well and good for a place to celebrate, but the cooks asked the Inquisitor’s permission to turn the vast empty room behind the kitchens into a dining hall, and by now the renovations are nearly complete.

There aren’t many people here at this time of day — mostly soldiers on the night watch, taking dinner before they head off to bed — but Cullen woke up before dawn and knew there’d be no getting back to sleep. If nothing else, he appreciates the relative peace of the morning hours.

He appreciates even more the sight of Krem, trailing inside with a few other Chargers.

Krem gives him an exhausted smile and brings his plate over, complaining as soon as he walks into earshot.

“ _Any time’s a good time for drills, Krem. Need to be ready at all hours, Krem_. Bastard just likes watching us suffer.” He sits down heavily, trailing his hand over Cullen’s thigh in greeting. And normally Cullen wouldn’t be inclined to press for more, but he can’t stop thinking about what Dalish said yesterday. _Ashamed?_ Of Krem? Not in a thousand years.

He leans in obviously enough that Krem could easily stop him, aims for a quick chaste brush of their lips, but Krem catches his chin and lingers, fingers stroking under Cullen’s jaw.

“Well, hello,” says Krem when they’ve parted, his smile bright and unruly like he can’t quite tamp it down, less practiced than the one he usually wears.

“Good morning.”

“Yeah.” Krem clears his throat and busies himself drinking from a cup of tea. Apparently he takes it black, a fact Cullen files away for later. Personally he’s never broken his old fondness for adding milk and sugar, but it’s a taste more easily maintained in a Circle or a keep than on the road.

He wonders if he’ll ever have the chance to make tea for Krem, somewhere other than a keep or a military camp—then wonders if he’s somehow given the impression he wouldn’t want that, the simple, comfortable intimacy of it; his problem has never been a failure to be obvious in his affections. Quite the opposite, really.

“Hey.” Krem reaches up and taps gently at Cullen’s temple. “What’s going on in there?”

“Have I,” he tries, and stops, unsure if that would come out wrong, like a request for personal reassurance instead of information. He clears his throat. “Is there something—”

“Commander!”

It’s a healer’s assistant, not a runner, which suggests whoever needs him sent the very first person they saw; Cullen casts aside all other concerns immediately. “Yes?”

“Inquisitor wants to see you right away,” they boy says, breathless, “by the gate.”

He starts to rise out of instinct, then glances down at his half-empty plate.

“I’ll get your stuff,” Krem waves him off, “don’t worry about it.”

Cullen murmurs his thanks, already moving, close on the heels of the healer’s assistant to hear his somewhat jumbled report of intruders on the mountain path below. On his way to the door he nearly collides with Grim, who glances between Cullen and Krem and scowls. “Huh.”

“Yes, and the same to you,” says Cullen wearily, before continuing on his way out.

 

\--

 

It’s a day that begins with excitement, then trails inexorably toward tedium.

The men on the road turned out to be mercenaries, their papers signed by Queen Anora herself, with orders to hunt down Venatori and cooperate completely with the Inquisition’s forces. But supplying the group and providing them with orders takes up most of the day, and by the time Cullen returns to the kitchens for a bowl of soup kept warm for the night watch, it’s well past dark.

Tomorrow he’s promised to help with training some new Marcher recruits, which means the day after will involve so much accumulated paperwork he’ll be lucky to leave his office at all.

Not an unusual week, by any means, Cullen admits to himself as he makes his way toward his own rooms. Just not the sort of schedule he might wish for while trying to figure out if his— if _Krem_ is upset about something, or if Cullen’s been making some sort of terrible and unwitting mistake. Why else would the Charger’s threats need to be so violent?

He climbs the ladder to his bedroom without light, trusting his memory of the familiar space to guide him now that he’s done it a hundred times; it’s not as if there’s much in the way of clutter to trip him up. No use wasting the candle, really.

Then a torch flares to life on his bed, illuminating Sera’s gleeful grinning face.

He recognizes her, of course, after a moment, but not before the flickering of the flame, the smiling rictus of her expression, send him lurching back, tripping onto the floor. It’s idiotic, the instinct to close up and panic instead of reacting; he should know better. He’s finding it very difficult to breathe.

After a moment, Sera lights a lamp, blows out the torch and joins him.

“Oh, come on, whatsit,” she grumbles, her annoyance brittle with guilt, “you’re supposed to scream, not get all—hunched-up chokey. Breathe already or something.”

Sera drags him over toward the bed, and Cullen allows himself to be deposited there, sits slumped with his head by his knees and tries to inhale properly while Sera drops down beside him. She pokes pointedly at his shoulders until Cullen lets them relax.

“Anyway. Mess with Krem and you die and all that. Ugh, _shit!_ ” She hits his arm, backhand but with a closed fist and hard enough to hurt. “Took all the fun out, didn’t you.”

“Do they honestly think I’d hurt him?” asks Cullen, hoarse and miserable.

“Oh, cheer _up_ ,” she groans, rocking over so their shoulders collide. “It’s just friends, yeah, looking out for friends. Y’see things go all icky-shit-sideways for someone you like, you don’t want it to happen again, so you look out, right, and let people know what’s what.”

“So,” Cullen twists his hands ’til they don’t look like they’re shaking. “It’s nothing I’ve done.”

“What, aside from suckin’ his face? No, nothing _you_ did.”

He nods, then glances nervously at Sera. “Would you mind—not telling anyone that I…”

Sera just looks at him, her expression oddly unreadable. Her fingers tug at a loose thread on the seam of her leggings. “When I was a kid in Denerim, I always got scared of the dark. Stuff in it, like. Big old blood mage cuttin’ me open or blight or whatever, so. There.” She shrugs. “I don’t tell and you don’t, yeah?”

“Deal.” Cullen holds out a hand and she clasps it, briefly.

He can’t help smiling a bit, now that the panic has passed. His little sister, Ebris, used to creep around the house dead-set on scaring them all, and no one had the heart to tell her they always knew she was there. Mia once nearly broke her neck on the stairs, so determined was she to prove she’d been utterly terrified.

“Now what?” Sera demands, instantly suspicious.

“I was just thinking you remind me a bit of—”

“ _Eughhhh_ ,” says Sera with great feeling, face screwed up as she makes for the ladder. “Nope, thought about it, done now, night!”

“Good night,” he replies, smiling to himself, though the room is empty and the door below has already shut behind her. Cullen finds he actually feels better. He wasn’t expecting that.

 

\--

 

“I think this is all kind of silly,” says Stitches apologetically, having contrived to stop Cullen by the makeshift infirmary between the Chargers’ stomping grounds and the camp for newly arrived recruits. “You seem nice enough, and I figure Krem can handle himself.”

“No, I understand,” says Cullen, waving him on. “Do your worst.”

Stitches takes only a moment to gather his thoughts, then leans in with purpose, as if to make sure Cullen catches every word. “He’s the kind of guy who waits, when I’m patching people up. Always says ‘take care of them first,’ or ‘they’ve got worse than me.’ Doesn’t shy away from saying when he’s hurt real bad and knows it, but he’s like that most of the time. Looking out for the rest. Learned from the boss more ways than one.”

“All right.”

“I know you’ve had your own trouble,” says Stitches, and laughs. “Who doesn’t, right? But don’t just let him take care of you and forget that sometimes he needs looking after too.”

With that done, he takes a step back and spreads his hands, as if to say _that’s all for me_.

“Thank you,” Cullen tells him. “That was… much more helpful than death threats.”

Stitches grins. “So, next time her worship finds more of that Garbolg’s—”

“It will find its way to you,” he promises without hesitation. “Absolutely. I think it would be in everyone’s best interest.”

“Knew you were the good sort,” says Stitches, triumphantly thumping Cullen’s shoulder.

 

\--

 

That afternoon finds Cullen a bit at his wit’s end regarding his forces. It’s not that an army can always be expected to come together smoothly, but a bit more cohesion between the Orlesian and Marcher recruits would be wonderful—or at least, a little less outright hostility. He’s just received a message about actual fistfights going on in the barracks when Rocky appears in his doorway, and Cullen isn’t exactly in the mood.

“Let me guess,” he interrupts before it can even begin. “You know undetectable poisons. You’ll place bombs in my office. I’ll never be seen or heard from again, and the pieces of my corpse will never be found, no matter how hard they search.”

“Hey, you’re pretty good at this,” says Rocky, looking impressed.

“Um.” The messenger glances nervously between them. “Should I just—?”

“Yes, thank you, that will be all.” When the door is shut behind her, Cullen raises his eyebrows, expectant. “Did I miss anything?”

“No, I think that about covers it. Acid-laced tea, I like that one.” Rocky nods to himself, brushing a thumb over each side of his moustache, as if making a careful mental note. “Anyway, come have a drink with us sometime, huh?”

Cullen stares at him.

“Okay, yeah, you’re right, that did sound bad together, but—come have a drink without acid! Or poison. Just a nice, not deadly…” He shrugs. “Yeah, feels like I’m making it worse.”

“You are.”

“Eh. Win some, lose some. Be good to him, all right?”

It’s a week that’s teetered between frustration and sheer absurdity, and Cullen finds himself needing to bite his tongue before speaking to keep from laughing, despite his sincerity.

“You have my word.”

 

\--

 

The Iron Bull doesn’t stand in Cullen’s office so much as he fills it, with all the height and sheer imposing _size_ of the largest qunari anyone’s ever seen, topped off with an eyepatch and that patient, affable smile. He rocks a little, back and forth, on the balls of his feet, and somehow the room isn’t shaken by it. Without a doubt, he could rip Cullen limb from limb.

But the thing is— honestly, the thing is, Cullen has no intention of allowing Krem to be hurt by whatever exists between them. He’s never taken this lightly, isn’t sure he’s the sort of man who can; it’s put off what few lovers he’s found before, his inability to engage in a brief dalliance without showing some piece of his heart. For the most part it’s been treated as amusing naivete or a harmless quirk to be tolerated, never something of value, worth protecting.

 _You should definitely keep me_ , he’d said, and Cullen means to, for as long as Krem will have him.

So he looks right into Bull’s eye and waits, refusing to flinch.

It takes a while, but finally the Iron Bull grunts, like a particularly approving boulder. “Yeah. You’re all right, Cullen,” he decides.

“Is that all?”

He shrugs one shoulder—one massive, stone-carved shoulder, each shifting muscle bigger than Cullen’s entire head, and says, quite cheerfully, “I figured the rest was implied.”

 

\--

 

Two days later, when they file out of a meeting in the war room, Krem is waiting in the hall.

“Commander,” he says easily, straightening up. “Mind if I borrow you a moment?”

“Of course.” Subtlety has never, not once in his life, been Cullen’s strength. He knows he must look as absurdly pleased to see Krem as he feels, from the smiles exchanged by Josephine and the Inquisitor—Leliana doesn’t bother reacting, because of course she’s probably known since the very first night. Honestly, Cullen can’t bring himself to care.

They’re left alone a few moments later, when the door to Josephine’s office is gently closed.

“So, on a scale of — one to ten, let’s say,” Krem says, “how angry are you?”

Cullen is struck dumb by the very idea, long enough to notice that perhaps for the first time since they met, Krem actually looks nervous. “Swear on the Black Divine’s hat, I didn’t know what they were doing,” he continues. “Should’ve figured it out, the way they were acting.”

“They care about you a great deal. Anyone so willing to protect a friend…” He shrugs. “I’m glad you have them. Though Skinner might have taken a few years off my life.”

“Yeah, she’ll do that,” Krem agrees, belied by the fondness of his grin. “Anyway, I have to go soon. Something about a bandit problem in Crestwood; her worship wants the Chargers to take care of it. Should be back in a week or two.”

There’s not much point in being disappointed, by now; it’s just the way things go for the two of them. Still, Cullen sighs and rests his hand on Krem’s neck, rubbing gently with his thumb along the collar of his shirt.

“Tell your friends that if anything happens to you, I’ll…make their lives miserable, somehow.”

“Hm.” Krem cocks his head, considering. “Needs a bit more violence. Threats of horrible torture, dismemberment. I’ll be sure to embellish when I tell them.”

“Thank you,” says Cullen gratefully.

“I’ll also be fine.”

“Right. Of course. I— I didn’t mean to imply you wouldn’t be, just that I—”

Krem is merciful, and cuts him off with a kiss, a soft, lingering thing that steals the breath from Cullen’s lungs straightaway. His lips are wet when he ducks to place a kiss under Cullen’s jaw, and the print of it stays on his skin, cold in the mountain air, like a small possessive brand left to mark him while Krem kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him.

There’s nothing, Cullen thinks, as well worth keeping as this.

 

\--

**Author's Note:**

> i can usually be found crying over cabbages on [tumblr](http://psikeval.tumblr.com)


End file.
